SAN FRANCISCO, July 19 (Reuters) - Meal delivery service DoorDash Inc has hired Uber Technologies Inc's head of finance to be its chief financial officer, positioning the startup closer to an initial public offering and dealing another executive loss to Uber.

Before Uber, Prabir Adarkar, the new DoorDash CFO, worked on deals at Goldman Sachs, a bank that frequently leads IPOs for Silicon Valley technology companies.

Tony Xu, co-founder and chief executive officer of DoorDash, said on Thursday that he selected Adarkar for his "sharp mind" and leadership skills. Founded in 2013, DoorDash provides, via a smartphone app, food delivery from restaurants in cities across the United States and Canada.

Adarkar had been head of strategic finance for Uber since 2015, and as the most senior finance executive he led a team of more than 500 employees. His departure leaves yet another vacancy for the ride-services company, which has been without a chief financial officer for three years.

In a statement, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi praised Adarkar for "improving financial controls to putting the company on a path to profitability."

At a technology conference in Aspen, Colorado, this week, Khosrowshahi also lamented that his company's CFO search "is taking longer than I'd like."

"We have terrific candidates," Khosrowshahi said at the conference, adding that he's looking for a CFO who will stay beyond Uber's initial public offering, planned for next year.

Uber and DoorDash share an investor in Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, which has through its $100 billion Vision Fund made large investments in both companies. SoftBank in March led a $535 million investment in DoorDash, bolstering the firm’s valuation from about $700 million to $1.4 billion and giving it the cash needed for an international expansion.

DoorDash said this year it is tripling its geographic footprint to 1,600 cities and hiring 250 people.

And SoftBank in January became Uber's largest shareholder after taking a 15 percent stake in the company through a large tender of stock from employees and exiting investors, and making a new investment of $1.25 billion.

DoorDash and Uber are also competitors. Uber is pouring more resources into growing UberEats, its meal-delivery operation. (Reporting by Heather Somerville; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Phil Berlowitz)